


let victory be

by Byacolate



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Drabble Collection, Established Relationship, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Fluff, what's better than dwarves being dwarves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-09-18
Packaged: 2018-03-18 20:23:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3582696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Byacolate/pseuds/Byacolate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He‘s seen scarier shit than the gentle, trusting eyes of a woman not half his size. Surely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Friendly Concern

“So. The Qunari, huh? Ambitious.“

 

She looks up from her cards to Varric across the table. He‘s sitting pretty on the evening‘s winnings, a tankard half-full by his impressive pile of silver. He also doesn‘t come across quite as innocent as he might hope - particularly not with Sera slouched over the table snoring on his right, and one of Dorian‘s belts draped over the back of an empty chair, forgotten.

 

“Digging for details?” she asks, tossing a couple silver down on the table. She probably doesn‘t know what‘s good for her, but there‘s something to be said for dragging out imminent humiliation for the sake of bravado. And she has coin to spare.

 

Varric laughs and meets her wager. “Boss, I wouldn‘t know what to do with them if I had them.”

 

“Oh, if I fetched you some blank vellum and a fresh pot of ink, you might change your tune.”

 

 

He raises his tankard to her before taking a liberal swallow. “I‘m not looking for dirt on anything so interesting. Not right now, at least. I imagine I might need time to brace myself for... whatever it is you get up to.”

 

“But you are looking for _something_.”

 

“Who isn‘t?” Varric scratches his jaw and discards half of his hand. Risky. “I‘ve had this talk before, believe it or not. Went about as smoothly then, too.”

 

“And what sort of talk is it, exactly?” she asks, hoping he‘ll mistake the glint in her eye for amusement and not confidence. If she keeps him talking, she might have a chance. Improbable, but always possible - as tend to be her odds in most areas of life these days.

 

“Just a little friendly concern.” Varric restocks his hand from the pile, and Cadash disregards the slight upward tic at the corner of his mouth. She never knows whether it‘s a tell or a calculated bluff, and she‘s positive he's aware of it. "Y'know, a gentle reminder that you're in the habit of making eyes at a foreign spy - sorry, _exiled_ foreign spy, who looks like he could eat a dwarf for breakfast."  


 

“And he does," she says, lifting her glass to him with a sardonic twist to her lips. "Wouldn‘t it be better for you to give this talk to Bull instead?” she asks, drawing from the pile. “I‘m the one in the position of power here. His employer. And the one with the big glowing mark on my hand. If anybody doesn‘t know what they‘re getting into -”

 

“Now, I never said that,” he chuckles. Sera snorts, drawing both of their attention and cutting Varric off before he can speak again. Blearily she blinks up at the Inquisitor - or somewhere just to skewed to the left of the Inquisitor’s cheek - before her head falls back to the table and she’s out again. 

 

Their eyes meet over her outstretched hand and share a moment of quiet laughter before Cadash hums and rearranges her hand.

 

“You were just in the middle of your friendly interrogation?“

 

“Inquisitor.” He‘s grinning and thinks himself sly, the way his eyes flicker over the cards as they do. “That implies I think you‘re up to no good.”

 

“That‘s normally up for debate, depending on the company.”

 

“Believe me, I really don‘t want to know,” he assures her.

 

With a wink, Cadash leans forward onto her elbows and draws another card. “And I‘m not inclined to tell you. But I‘m touched at your concern, Varric. Ha!” Gleeful, she slaps her hand on the table for him to see. But as he lays out his own with a controlled lack of flare, Cadash flops back in her seat, triumph turned to swift defeat. “ _Damn_.”

 

Sera‘s fingers twitch at the scrape and clink of Varric‘s winnings dragged across the table to join his pile. Satisfaction glows from deep within his broad face, but she‘d be lying if she said she hadn‘t anticipated her failure as the end to the evening. Playing with Varric rarely ended in anything less than his success, if Josephine wasn‘t present. 

 

“This is the part where I spill my heart to keep you from gloating, isn‘t it?” she sighs, watching him sweep the cards up into a neat little deck.

 

“Only spare the goriest details. Or are those the ones I‘d prefer to hear?”

 

One corner of her mouth tips up into a smirk. “Probably. Aha, keep making noises like that one and I‘ll have to start calling you Little Cassandra.” The look he shoots her at that is particularly dry, and she can‘t help but laugh.

 

Sera begins to snore again when Cadash finishes the foamy remains of her ale and shoves the tankard away. Lips licked, throat cleared, she finally levels Varric with the straightforward eye contact she may or may not have been avoiding all evening.

 

“I‘ve already defended our - the nature of our relationship to my advisors. Well, most of them. Plus Cassandra.”

 

He whistles long and low. “Shit. That serious, huh?”

 

She wonders if her face has gone too soft and drags the mug back to stare at the sloppy dregs collected at the bottom. The warm side of the halved tooth lies beneath her cloak in the valley of her breasts, hidden but ever present. Bull is not so subtle with his half. The thought makes her smile.

 

“Oh yeah. Definitely that serious,” Varric mutters to himself. He taps the top of his deck with idle fingers. “Well, I for one am pleased for you. Can‘t say I expected it, but for your sake, Boss. I‘m happy.”

 

Familiar footsteps trod up the stairs of the keep proper, as though speaking of him had made him appear. Bull is a shadow against the darkened courtyard before the light of the entry hall brings him into focus.

 

She catches his eye over the top of Sera‘s head and a feeling blooms in her chest that wouldn‘t go amiss in one of Cassandra‘s favorite novels.

  
Cadash rises to meet him halfway, patting Varric on the shoulder as she passes. “Yeah,” she hums, ”so am I.”


	2. eye level

When he takes to his tavern throne, they are nearly equals in height. It delights her and amuses him when he slouches just so. Like this, their eyes are level, no craning necks or climbing rocks to inspect a freshly wounded shoulder, to share a pint, to curl his fingers in her hair for but a moment before they‘re back to being professionals.

 

His legs stretch on forever and she steps around them casually, sidling up until she is close enough that she could reach out and touch his face, were she of a mind. Instead she simply smiles, and her fingers brush once, feather light over his hand where it lies draped over the arm of the chair. 

 

He’s been smiling like an idiot since she walked into the tavern, but that’s nothing new. Not really. Truth be told, she’s just as bad when he knocks his knuckles against hers, calls her _his heart_. 

 

They’re a pair of dopey jackasses, and Bull’s going to get flack for it; he can feel the Chargers’ eyes on them, snoopy bastards that they are. But when Cadash touches her hip to his outstretched thigh he can’t bring himself to care.

 

She inquires about his men, about the weather, about the new shipment of Nevarran fire whiskey she has yet to try, like they both don’t know how this conversation will end. Like Bull isn’t going to end up following her to the sunny corner behind the tavern to crowd her against the wall, hidden from prying eyes. Like they’re not going to make good use of what little free time she has with his hand on her ass and both of hers around his neck. 

 

And then she’ll be off again to get shit done, the weight of the world on her shoulders until he can pin her down and take it all apart, piece by piece, until she’s quaking and free in the cage of his arms.

  
For now, though. For now she laughs at the look on his face when he talks about his depleted stores of cocoa. For now he is low enough to see all the tiniest creases in her smile, the dark smudge of eyeliner that follows her hand where she wipes a teary eye. For now, he’s sitting pretty with the best view in the house, and he’s fairly sure he’ll keep this chair forever. 


	3. the disquieting scent of blood traitors

She smells like the grand duchess‘ perfume. Bull buries his face in the crook of her neck and finds it there, the scent laid low under sweat and heat, but he can smell it all the same. He sinks his teeth into the juncture of her shoulder and she gasps, going tight around his fingers.

 

It‘s a fine, cloying scent that remains in the air even when he pulls the formal coat from her body, one-handed, and tosses it across the room to join her boots and trousers. He pulls his hand away to slap her ass and hasten her onto the bed.

 

They are guests in the Winter Palace, and the Inquisitor‘s room is lush. The evening was a bit of a blur between all the alcohol and sabotage, but he‘s pretty sure no one was murdered in this room. Tonight, at least. The windows are tall - Serault glass, if his eye‘s not failing him - and overlook the garden where they‘ve definitely killed their fair share of Venatori, all expertly disposed of by some unfortunate staff, the bloodstains scrubbed free to maintain the palace‘s pristine facade.  


Or not. He hadn‘t exactly taken the time admire the view - no longer than it took Cadash to join him on the balcony and draw her nails across the small of his back.  


He'd promised her his full attention once, what feels like an age ago - somewhere around the time he put the title _Liar_ behind him for good. He'd meant it then. He means it now.  


The cloying perfume does not follow him when he moves between her legs. Cadash draws one over his shoulder with the ease of familiarity and he breathes the scent of her, hot and dark. It's old hat to leave bites along her inner thighs, hard enough to bruise, and she touches herself when he does. Bull can tell the moment she comes from the gasp that shudders through her body and the sharpening of her scent; he takes her fingers past his teeth and tastes her there first.  


A heel digs into the meat of his shoulder and he grunts in warning, releasing her fingers if only to let her drag them over his jaw. The rasp of his stubble against her nails pleases her. It pleases her more when the rough of it sounds between her thighs.  


The Iron Bull has been eating all evening, but only now does he feast.  


She comes again from the long, lazy draws of his tongue as his long fingers crook inside until she's nearly sobbing, and again - short and bright and quick - when he slicks her thighs and pushes himself between. And when she cannot come any more, breathless and shaking and blessedly blank, he curls his fingers in the hair at her nape and despoils the Orlesian sheets beneath her.  


When he drags her up the bed to sleep off all the excitement of the evening's treasonous plots, the Grand Duchess' perfume remains. But it has mostly faded under the scent of sweat and sex and (mostly) clean bedclothes and Bull.  


And that, he thinks, will have to do.


	4. intend to continue

She passes him a dragon tooth, cleaved in two, and for the first time in a long time his brain stutters and stops. Her face does that thing where she smiles from all the way inside, always a little too soft for Bull‘s area of expertise, and her eyes drop to the necklace.

 

“So that no matter where life takes us,” she begins and recites the ancient sentiment word for word, and he feels warm. It‘s funny, but he doesn‘t want to laugh. He just kind of wants to have her undressed and under him until the world stops falling to shit. Maybe forever.

 

“People don't often surprise me, _kadan_ ,” he breathes, letting the tooth fall to the bed to touch her face, and it feels good. It feels good.

 

“Kadan?” she repeats, still too soft. But softness is not the equivalent of weakness. What strength it must take to remain soft at the forefront of this shitty war, as the heretic and the savior, as the Herald and the Inquisitor. Bull doesn‘t know how to be soft, not really. Not out of necessity - not when he isn't filling a role, twisting a perception. But he thinks it might be worth the time and the effort to learn. It will be his own dragon to take apart and lay at her feet, an offering of... this. Whatever _this_ is that she's handing to him freely, without a hint of doubt written on her face.  


 

He‘s seen scarier shit than the gentle, trusting eyes of a woman not half his size, he is sure.

 

 

“My heart,” he says, quietly, quietly, and takes her to bed.


	5. if it's all the same

The entire hall is thrumming with the energy of victory, but the victor herself looks weary.

She smiles, of course, and mingles as she's expected, but the Iron Bull can see how she stays close to her friends. She draws her strength from them in the aftermath as she has all along, and he is pleased to see the color in her face and the way her shoulders go lax in their presence.

When she comes to him, he is ready for her with a cup of something strong and ancient dug out of the cellar by his men. And while she barely manages to choke it down, he laughs, claps her on the small of her back where he can reach. Obligingly, she steps closer to cough discretely against the back of her hand while he lauds the battle, their triumph, the fallen would-be god, and the dwarf who made it all possible. 

And she smiles, nudges his shoulder with her elbow as his sentiments are returned.

It's the drink and the pent-up adrenaline and energy of the room, but he wants to kiss her. Wants to pull her down into his lap and keep her there for the rest of the night where she can drink and eat and stop, for once, to truly rest. Wants to keep her there where anyone who doesn't know them would be too intimidated by the size of his horns and number of his scars to rouse her into duty. 

Instead, he contents himself with talk and an arm around her waist. She sways into him as he's thinking out loud, the words fast and easy as he recalls his freedom.

“For the first time in my life, I can go anywhere I want.”

There is no Qun to return to. It is a dull ache in his chest still, when he thinks of the sea breeze and the scent of spice. When she calls him her heart in a language not her own, a language he will never again hear spoken freely with the ease and comfort of home. When she continues to fill the shelves in her room with Qunlat tomes for his comfort, though he hasn't opened a single one. 

It is a dull ache, but he has learned to move on. And he has learned to want in a way that is all his own. He has found in himself the desire to settle, inasmuch as a member of the Inquisition can.

There are good fights to be had here, weak foreign liquor and dragons to hunt and rifts to mend. There are nations to rebuild and heads to turn and order to restore. And then there is the Inquisitor, short and round and dropping her eyes briefly to her cup before she glances up to meet his again. Quietly, and full of hope - unabashed, honest, forthright in this as in all things, 

“Or you could stay.”

The rim of the tankard falls slowly from his lips. There are people all around clambering for her attention, and there will be more to come - there will always be more - but now she is for him alone. 

He reaches out to take her cup when he sees it run empty, and if his fingers linger just a moment over hers to say what his lips do not, sometimes that is the way of things.

As though he could leave, after all this. As if he could heft his axe over one shoulder and lead his men anywhere that did not ultimately return to the castle on the mountain. As if his new-found freedom was akin to restlessness. As if he could easily, happily leave her to lead and conquer and fight and sleep alone. 

Though her eyes speak loudly for her, they do not see as much as they should.

The Iron Bull bumps his knuckles against the dragon tooth that lies beneath the buttons of her coat, and he smiles. 

“Or I could stay.”


	6. tied, but tenderly

She can‘t see, but she feels everything. His hands are big - unbelievably big and all over her body, each touch elemental on her skin. When she is laid low by the burden she has shouldered, his hands are like lightning, electric jolts crackling through her veins and make her breath short, heart stop. When she is ragged, they run like water over every crack and crevice until she is made smooth, unblemished, and new. And when she feels too big and too much, he burns her away until she is nothing and no one but who he has set ablaze in the sanctuary of his shadow.

 

It is like magic, though he may find the comparison distasteful.

 

He ties a ribbon around her eyes, but she is not afraid. She needs for nothing, wants for nothing in the dark when he is in control.

 

When he breaks her apart in his way, axe to pliant soil, she skirts forever on the edge of too much - though not in the way he thinks. She is too full, but not in the way he can control - shattered into too many pieces that she would not mend for all the world.

 

Every nerve, every thread, every fibre, is for him. For the scars on his back and raked over the planes of his face. For his laugh that shakes her and the low noises that burn her through. For the fingers he has lost and the empty, scarred socket lying hidden beneath a slab of leather. For the love of his young and reckless company, his errant crooked men, his family. For the way he gives of himself and for the things he has taken from her.

 

She may have lost her stone sense, but she has found something to be treasured in the mountain range slope of his shoulders, and in the cavernous depths of his heart, and in the iron of his chosen name.

 

He takes the satin from around her eyes, though she sees him just as clearly when the blindfold is secure. It is a funny thing how one hand can cup her face while the other unbinds her wrists when she can feel them both buried so deeply inside her ribs. It is there where they cradle her heart, invisible and omnipresent.

 

If he can be kept, she will keep him. It is only fair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _ Tied, but tenderly, loving in the letters of a word that would stop it, knots in satin scarves. _


	7. order out of chaos

He watches her, drunk and dopey and sprawled over the bar and grinning up at him without guile or reservation, and thinks, _shit_. It’s that feeling in his gut he gets when the wind is changing and things are starting to edge out of his control. But the feeling is a familiar one, and Bull knows how to adapt.

 

When she can no longer lift her head but demands another drink regardless, he knows it’s time to send her to bed. And then he thinks, if her wobbly legs can’t keep her standing on even ground, how is she meant to make it up all those stairs to her quarters? It's his fault she's three sheets to the wind. Mostly. Bull snorts, far from sober himself, but he lends his arm and she takes it.

 

Front man bodyguard he may be, but escorting an unsteady dwarf to bed was never part of the contract. Yet here he is of his own volition, wandering through an empty hall - well, mostly empty - more tolerable by far without all the tittering nobles in Orlesian masks. Even Varric isn’t there to smirk and question his intentions. If the Bull's had too much to drink for intentions, he's _definitely_ had too much to suffer an interrogation. Even the friendliest interrogation.

 

There’s a pitcher of water lying half-empty on her desk, and it’s a good idea. The best he can come up with at this hour with so much liquor in his bloodstream. So he does his best not to spill or break the porcelain on the journey back to her bed, and he pauses with his hand on Cadash’s shoulder to jostle her from half-dead to fully alert. The Iron Bull is about to force some water down the Inquisitor’s gullet for her own good. Like he might knock Krem on his ass a hundred times a day for his own good, or shove his fingers down Grim’s throat to force his body to purge a draught of poison for his own good, or keep Dalish and Skinner half a keep away from Solas for _everyone’s_ own good.

 

Thinks about what that might mean. Does it anyway.

 

He’s got a hand to the back of her neck and he’s goading her all the while, her maybe-possibly-semi-conscious unresponsiveness sucking most of the fun from it. He’s not sure why he’s here or why he’s cajoling the Inquisitor to wake and hydrate herself. She’s an adult - her own person, and shit, a little hangover never hurt anybody. Relatively speaking. Bull grunts to himself and pokes the dwarf’s side.

 

“Hey,” he says, shaking her head a little. “You gonna waste this rare opportunity to get coddled by the Iron Bull?”

 

She snorts, so he guesses she isn’t as incoherent he’d thought. “ _Rare_ ,” she says, and snorts again, and laughs when he lets her head go and she drops back into the pillows.

 

“Good to know you’re too far gone for bigger words, Boss,” he says, setting the pitcher in her drunk little hands. “Even though you’re still… wakeable.” She snorts again and blows an errant lock of hair from her face. “That shit could knock three legs off a horse. I’m impressed.”

 

“Dwarf, remember? Iron gut,” she hums. Tries to lift the pitcher. Watches a wave of it splash over her stomach. Laughs hard enough that he feels obliged to lift the pitcher from her hands.

 

“Iron gut, dough arm,” he says, and it only makes her laugh harder. The Iron Bull doesn't laugh, but his warm face is contorted in a grin. He can feel it in a detached sort of way, like the pitcher in his left hand, and her soaked clothes under his right. He knows what he'd do about that if she were one of his Chargers, or if they were fucking, but she isn't and they aren't, so the Bull is at a loss.

 

She does the thinking work for him with a barely managed, "Clothes. Ugh."

 

"Can you change?"

 

"Not a chance. Just." Her arm flops to the side and her face scrunches up in a frown. "Blanket."

 

"Right," he agrees. "Blanket."

 

She's still drenched when he pulls half of the wide bedspread over her, but she seems happy, so there's nothing more he can do about it. Cadash grunts when he slaps his thighs and stands on unsteady legs. "Don't fall down the stairs."

 

"No promises."

 

Sleepy giggles follow him down the staircase, and in his drunken, buzzing mind, he can't help but think she'll laugh herself to sleep. There are worse ways. There are also better ones. For now, though, this is nice.

 

Could be nicer, but still. Nice.


	8. where the heart lies

It isn‘t her word, but she uses it anyway. It lies in the cup of his palm when she kisses him, drifts over the crook of his elbow in the early morning when she thinks he does not hear. Bull likes to think that neither of them are exactly sentimental, but in the quiet moments when she traces her fingers over the veins in his arm and he feels the word, he wonders if he might need to reconsider.

It isn‘t her word, but it sits like a loaded spring trap on his tongue, set to go off whenever she enters a room.  Though it comes from his own damn mouth, he‘s always more startled by it than she - the ease of it, and the sincerity. Before he was _Hissrad_ , and even as the Iron Bull he has known himself to be a Liar; this word, at least, is true as blood.

It isn‘t her word, but it‘s a word that‘s meant for her alone. He can feel it in the way her arrows fly past his horns, and in the way the blunt of her nails trace his tattoos, and in the way the dragon tooth chafes at his chest. He can taste it in the sweat at the hollow behind her bent knee, and he can see it in the bruises bitten into the side of her neck.

It isn't her word, but there's a deep, dark scar that begins under her ribs and ends just to the left of center to her spine; she came by it blocking a templar's blade meant for the Iron Bull. It was foolish and pointless - he already so laden with scars - and she had met his righteous fury with a blood-soaked grin. He could've rubbed sand in the wound, and still she'd have laughed, and the Bull has never loved anyone more.

It isn't her word, but she wears her half of the tooth with pride, and she wears his marks wherever they lie on her body, and she wears her affection for a savage like he's honey-sweet, so it might as well be.

It isn't her word, except when he watches her don her armor, piece by bloodstained piece in the early light of dawn, it is. It is. 


	9. we shared before sunrise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the tumblr anon with the prompt "we shared before sunrise"
> 
> Trespasser DLC spoilers; set post-Trespasser

“Heading out,” he says, and she blinks awake, squinting up at him in the velvet blue-grey of the early morning.

 

“Uh?” 

 

He grins, reaching down to ruffle her mess of hair so it fans over the pillow. “I told you, remember? We’re heading to Jader for a job. Can make it in the next few days if we start early and ride hard.”

 

“Uh.”

 

She grapples for his forearm, hoisting herself up with it as leverage she no longer has with what’s left of her other arm. She’s half awake at best, but she struggles up to her feet on the uneven surface of the bed. Like this, they’re nearly of a height. Cadash pats at his chest and makes a pleased noise to find the halved tooth resting at the center. “Wasn’t gonna leave without it,” he says.

 

“Damn right.” 

 

The Bull laughs, knocking his forehead to hers, hoisting her up when her knees start to buckle. “You gonna want to talk about your feelings before I go? Got anything to share?”

 

“Ngh,” Cadash says eloquently, throwing an arm around his shoulders and burying her face in his neck.

 

“Sure, it’s too early for feelings now,” he goes on, holding her close, “but you’re probably going to wallow a little later. It’s gonna be quiet here without me. Too big. The bed won’t be the same with all that room to yourself. You’re gonna miss me. Sound about right?”

 

She grunts, and he smiles into her hair. 

  
“Well,” he says, cupping her bare ass and squeezing with all the affection he can muster, “right back at you, Kadan.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Inquire about fic requests [here!](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/ask)  
> Title from “Maiden” by MØ: _My desire is ravaging in me like a warrior's blade, proud and fine. Let victory be mine. What if I choose to tear down the wall? And take you in my arms, sweet sunbeam, though I'm not perfect at all_
> 
> If you are so inclined, feel free to follow [my Tumblr](http://wardencommando.tumblr.com/).


End file.
